Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Run for Gold

The SUBS Concilium is organizing a 7-km charity marathon aptly named “Run for Gold” on November 11, 2012 to raise much-needed funds for GOLD. [Note: A 7-km race does not qualify as a marathon, not even a half-marathon!].

GOLD is an acronym for the vision (Generating Opportunities for Learning Disabilities) and the principle objective of the Association of Learning Disabilities, Petaling District in Selangor, Malaysia. The center is located at Kompleks 3C MPSJ in Jalan PJS 11/2, Taman Bandar Sunway and this initiative by SUBS students is to raise not just money but also public awareness that individuals with learning disabilities live in our midst and they need our whole-hearted support. Kindly check out their blog at http://gold3c.blogspot.com/p/about-gold.html for more information.

Yesterday, six SUBS students came knocking door-to-door promoting to Sunway University staff and canvassing support for the “Run for Gold” – they performed a ditty that urged us to sign up and participate in this event.

Following up on the Pussy Riot case – read my October 13, 2012 blogpost at this link http://helpvictor.blogspot.com/2012/10/one-member-freed.html – the two members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have been sent to remote prison camps to serve their sentences. Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women's prison camp in Perm, a Siberian region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union's harshest camps. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons. They are expected to serve the rest of their sentences, which end in March 2014, in the camps, where conditions are reportedly dire. Please keep them in our prayers!

Oh yes, last evening, I was at the joint meeting of the MidValley and MIA Toastmasters Clubs meeting at Cititel MidValley and I was given the evaluator’s role for MIA member Samuel Sham who presented his CC speech #8. There were five speakers and I relished speeches by Satomi Isono and Penny Choo (although the latter must put in more practice to be fluid, fluent and flowing in her delivery). The evaluations were generally good and I was voted Best Evaluator. A good meeting that started three minutes late. I am happy to give the meeting a score of a 7 out of a 10.